Sermon Eph 6:4 Parenting by Grace pt.2 When Christ is King Introduction

In a systematic theology of grace in relation to everyday life, the relation of parents to children plays the most important role of all. Although this section about grace with children comes third after singleness and marriage, it is really first in importance.

This is the most important section in this chapter about relationships because the relation of parents to child is dominant in the mediation of law, hence alternatively it is dominant in the mediation of grace. "The child is father to the man." Paul Zahl, Grace in Practice.

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4 ) Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. (Colossians 3:21 ESV)

“What happens when you are a child, between your parents and you, is critically important to your whole world-picture. Most of the time, law is ingested by the child from his parents, and with law, the resistance to that relationship in later life.

If the child absorbs law along with the "mother's milk," then the mother will lose the child. The child will end up running away the other way. If law is the father's "song that remains the same", the child will end up running the other way.

Alternatively, if grace is in the mother's milk, then the child will return gladly to the mother. If grace is the father's "unchained melody", the child will always return.” - Paul Zahl

How do We make grace the “unchained melody” of our homes and relate like CHRIST is King? - I have faith in God's promises to feed and clothe my family. - I have faith in God's promise to save my children as the gospel is lived before them and presented to them.

- I am free to accept the child the way he is — and trust the Holy Spirit to bring the deep and lasting changes that are needed. Our attitudes toward God and our perception of His attitudes toward us are being mirrored in our style of parenting.

- I am confident that grace enables me to teach my children. I understand that suffering and discipline are "means of grace" that God will use to bring them to Himself.

- I remember that loving discipline (though important and necessary) can not take away sins, but is God's good way of reaching my child's conscience.

Paul Zahl…Therefore all the proper protective devices and systems with which little children must be surrounded by their parents come under the heading of the proper use of the law. These produce no fruit of flight or splitting because of guilt.

- I take my children in my arms, look them in the eyes and give them my love, praise, appreciation and approval. They feel loved, accepted— delighted in QUESTION: Do your children feel "delighted in" by you—or that they are merely being endured?

- I am free to ask forgiveness for myself and I am very free to give it! - I discipline/correct them as a fellow sinner, and freely admit my own sins to them.

- Because I know that rules (neither God's nor mine) cannot produce in them a love for God or others, I repent, love, pray, and trust the Holy Spirit to work on the root problems in my children as I bring them to the surface.

CONSIDER… I know that I cannot change the members of my family by my harsh and repeated corrections. DOES THIS SUGGESTION SEEM SIMPLISTIC—that when YOU are changed by the Gospel it has a powerful effect on the people around you?

People will be drawn to Christ when he shows Himself to them — through you Jesus was that one PERFECTLY HUMBLE Christian. His humility outdoes anything that we could ever IMAGINE.